Dig Updates
Follow all the archaeology action from onsite at Caerfai as it happens.
We're going to be on Digging for Britain!
Series 11 of Digging for Britain starts on 02 January 2024 – and we’re in it!
Available on iPlayer and BBC Two, you’ll see us featured in Episode 6, when a filmcrew from Digging for Britain came to film our crowdfunded rescue dig at Caerfai. Then, in September, Site Director Steph Duensing was invited into the studios to discuss our findings with presenter Alice Roberts.
We hope you’ll watch along to see the discoveries – and that you’ll enjoy learning about them as much as Alice did.
Wow it's our last day already?
It’s the calm before the storm! We can’t believe it’s our last day on site already. Today is going to be a whirlwind of activity to get everything wrapped up before all of the soil goes back into the trenches. Let’s take a moment to appreciate the calm (and the dry weather) before the (organised) chaos commences!
How can you tell when lots of exciting excavation is happening on site? The spoilheap turns rainbow! As people empty their buckets from different parts of the site, we get lots of different colours and textures showing up on the spoilheaps. Not that we’re obsessed with soil composition or anything!
Team beep
It’s not just drawings, our hi-tech team beep are out in force to collect all the digital data we need too. Drones, GPS, digital recording, and photogrammetry. It’s all going on here!
It's almost the end!
It’s our penultimate day at Caerfai, which means it’s recording recording, recording. The team are all on hand to measure, draw and photograph everything before start backfilling our lovely trenches.
Half-sectioning in Trench 4
David and Sasha have been carefully half-sectioning a stoney feature in Trench 4. The white bucket is nearly full with the environmental sample they’ve been collecting, which we’ll check for charcoal, plant and macrofossil remains to help us learn more about the Iron Age environment.
Sieving at the end of the world
Josh and Abbey have been excavating a feature in Trench 4, they both have eagle eyes for spotting finds, but they’re sieving all of their spoil just to be sure they haven’t missed any pesky tiny artefacts. And what a view to have while you’re shaking mud through a sieve!
End of day wrap
Caroline lead the end of day wrap up for trench 3 today, showing off the hard work the Venturers have been putting in unpicking the eastern side of the big stone roundhouse. How do you tell whether a stone is part of a roundhouse or just a random stone? Good question! Venturers have been deploying the tried and tested ‘wiggle test’ to determine what is structural and what is just a random floating rock. Basically, you hit a rock and see if it wiggles. SCIENCE.
Pre-model clean up
Some of our new starters today combined trowelling 101 with a trench 4 clean back in advance of a photogrammetry session. They’ve taken to it like a duck to water!
Our first small find!
Precious metal artefacts like this are rare on sites such as these so well done to Olivia here for finding the first small find of the dig! It looks likes copper alloy with a decorative finial, perhaps the top section of a pin. Tasty.
Follow our progress
See the latest updates and follow the archaeology action from Caerfai as it happens.
